U-verse back up after outage hit thousands

AT&T's U-verse service was out for days for tens of thousands of subscribers. Service was restored by midday Thursday.

Story highlights

AT&T says U-verse service back up for all after outage

AT&T: Roughly 1% of the service's subscribers were hit with a multiday outage

Problem was linked with a software update, AT&T says

Service had been restored by midday Thursday for tens of thousands of AT&T's U-verse TV, Internet and phone customers after an outage that lasted several days.

""U-verse service has been restored for all customers affected by the outage.," AT&T spokeswoman Emily Edmonds told CNN on Thursday. "We know our customers count on their U-verse service, and we apologize for the inconvenience."

Edmonds said the outage hit "a limited number of customers" in the South, some of whom were without service since Monday. The service has roughly 7.4 million subscribers.

In all, fewer than 1% of those customers experienced the outage, according to an earlier AT&T statement.

The outage was related to a software upgrade, Edmonds said, saying the problem was fixed by AT&T engineers Thursday morning. The service outage did not affect AT&T's landline or wireless service subscribers.

"I just got an AT&T ad in email that said how wonderful they are too," wrote one subscriber from Oklahoma. "Come on already. My husband says we are canceling. There is no excuse for no service at all for 3 days, no explanation, and not even following through on the ones that you had appointments scheduled with ... . Bad, bad, bad business."

Edmonds said that affected customers will receive a credit on their bills. The credits will appear within 30 to 60 days, she said.

U-verse is a "triple play" bundle of cable TV, phone and Internet services offered by AT&T. It was launched in 2006 and is available in 22 states.